I need help please guys. Need a compact for work use. The primary use will only be to take photos of people for swimming pool membership cards. However, it would be handy to have something vaguely ok for use around the rest of the site. Budget is probably £50-100 max. Any ideas?

I've ordered from the Fuji b-stock website before and that's turned out ok. Not up on the latest stuff though.....

Thanks.

I've always been a fan of the Canon PowerShot range, they're designed for point and shoot, but also have quite good manual control over aperture, shutter speed, white balance and manual focus too.

The Canon PowerShot A480 (10MP, 3.3 zoom) falls within your budget and is available in 4 colours (black, silver, red and blue) - from £76.46 on Amazon

Cool! Thanks Steve. That seems like a lot of compact for the money. It's amazing how much things have moved on.

Yes, I'm tempted to buy one for my mum and dad for Christmas as he struggles with his tiny Nikon Coolpix S220 compact - his big fingers can't press the shutter release properly on his Nikon!! Incidentally, the Nikon Coolpix compacts are terrible cameras - I recommended the brand to him when he was buying his last camera, mainly because the the reputation of the SLR models. But it's just rubbish, bad shutter lag, grainy shots indoors and has trouble focussing - I definitely wouldn't recommend the Nikon compacts, and I feel bad about my dad buying one on my recommendation - hence why I'm thinking of getting the A480 for my dad's christmas present to make up for it.

Actually, I may have slightly misled you on the manual control of the A480 (having read the reviews below), it doesn't have full manual control over shutter and aperture which most of the other PowerShot "A" series has had up to now. It does have a "Program" mode though which offers some manual control, plus there's plenty of pre-sets. It's obviously made to a budget, with the plastic body rather than metal. But having said that, it's still a great value, good quality camera for less than £80.

Here are two reviews of it - HERE and HERE (plus sample photos)

I've had two Canon PowerShot cameras (A70 and A640) and both have been excellent cameras. Having said that, I'm sure others will chip in with their favourites too, so maybe hold off buying just yet!